If 2012 taught us anything, it was that the conservative forces seeking to deny women and families access to basic reproductive healthcare are not going away. It was also that they continue to use their brand of religions to justify their threats to women’s heath. You can be a voice of reason in the mess. You can join progressive people of faith who refuse to let the media and politicians paint all religious people as anti-choice, anti-contraception, anti-woman. You can... Read more
The following is an excerpt from a commentary I wrote for my local newspaper, the Jacksonville Journal-Courier, published last week. The picture to the right is a historic one of our actual intersection of Church and State streets. This commentary brings together the ongoing struggles for marriage equality in the state of Illinois with some reflections on religious pluralism by Eboo Patel, who is speaking on my campus today. Church intersects with state all over the place in our lives... Read more
The story of H. Adam Ackley has caught a significant amount of media attention in recent weeks, as noted over at Theoblogy, and at greater length at the Religion News Service website. In short, A California Christian university has asked a professor who was once its chair of theology and philosophy to leave after he came out as transgender. Heather Clements taught theology at Azusa Pacific University for 15 years, but this past year, he began referring to himself as H.... Read more
Chris Henrichsen over at Approaching Justice kicked off a Patheos bloggers roundtable this week on the question: Are Mormons Christian? Here’s how he introduced the conversation: For most Mormons, the answer to this question is obvious. Yes, yes they are. They believe in Jesus Christ. This settles it for them. For people from other religious perspectives, the answer is obvious but in the negative. Mormons are not Christians. The reasons for this response is varied. For some, few answers are... Read more
I resisted seeing The Butler. After the mess that was The Help, here came yet another movie valorizing the black domestic. Yes, this time it would have the sweep of history and the he-was-there-for-it-all thing going on, featuring an Oscar-bait cast. But really, did I have to reward another portrayal of subservient roles that a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy wants to keep seeing black people in? And must we literally wrap the black domestic in the American flag, like this... Read more
I finally got a chance to read The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowling’s first published non-Harry Potter book, and I’m trying to remember why it got lackluster reviews. But I don’t want to go back and read any of them because I found it captivating. Maybe it was too soon on the heels of Hogwarts, or maybe it was too edgy for the fans of her young adult fiction. But I thought it shared so much that was compelling about the... Read more
I happened upon the book, A Church of Her Own, last spring on a colleague’s bookshelf, and immediately decided to add it to the reading list for my seminar on Sex and God. Specifically, the first week that we spend talking about women’s ordination in Christian traditions. After working through John Wijngaards’ careful study of the major arguments against ordaining women in the Roman Catholic tradition, students turn to consider Protestant Christianity, and specifically what happens after traditions do decide... Read more
As the trial of Private Manning concluded this August, the convictions on more than 20 counts turned out not to be the big story for many. Through lawyers, she issued a statement about her gender identity along with a request for the media to use her preferred name, Chelsea: “As I transition into this next phase of my life, I want everyone to know the real me. I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female. Given the way that I... Read more
I appreciate and affirm the NALT Christians project, the idea of stating over and over again in public that not all Christians are “like that” … homophobes and sexists to be precise. A big part of why I started writing and speaking more about issues like marriage equality and reproductive justice in recent years was in fact to untangle the hold that right-wing and conservative evangelical Christianity has when it comes to public god-talk and the politicization of sexuality. So... Read more
If you haven’t heard of it yet, check out this video introduction to The NALT Christians Project: I have some thoughts on this that I’ll post soon … appreciative as well as analytical. For now, here it is, what do you think? Read more
Caryn Riswold
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